


Victims

by allcanadiangirl (andchimeras), BJ Garrett (andchimeras)



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-10-31
Updated: 2002-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-08 07:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/allcanadiangirl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/BJ%20Garrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We must recognize the stigma attached to victims in our society, the isolation, ostracism, and humiliation they often feel, regardless of their innocence." An overview of victimhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_We must recognize the stigma attached to victims in our society, the isolation, ostracism, and humiliation they often feel, regardless of their innocence._ —Dr. Frank M. Ochberg

  


* * *

  
The victim of utterly un-random chance. Unknowing, unaware until the shell explodes inside his blood and the world ends for a second, then continues on, as if it had always happened like that. As if no one would notice. As if it didn't matter anyway.

The victim of his decision and her own. A few words--the world implodes or not by leaving out a few words. They are left, still locked in that space between her hand and the pen, above her damning name. It will all come out in the end, even though it didn't really matter to the kid's GPA.

The victim of larger events, driven to a smaller and smaller point, a dot of red light on the back of his head, diving into the brown amber depths. Encased in crystal, pounding at the cage he has built himself, happy beyond relief to know nothing but service. To owe nothing but duty.

The victim of his own logic. Of every bounce bringing back a scene, a sentence, pushing at him, pounding at him. Of the need to know and understand and not be in the dark, because the dark is close. Of loving to win and hating to lose and always losing, except this one time, but now it's been taken away. Now it means nothing to win, because in the end it will be counted a loss.

The victim of words flying too fast from their mouths and out of hers. The syllables and syntax falling on the road, tripping her up, turning her around, their hands always out, eyes always accusing, even when she has nothing to hide. Even when she does, because it's not wrong to have done what she didn't know she did, but they will all think it so. And it's the thought that counts.

The victim of a corrosion in social values, rubbing and rubbing at the seams of illusion until all the cloudy reality spilled out like a spray of sniper-fire. So now sirens are music and music is like a nightmare always pushing at the eardrums. It is a steady pressure, and it is obvious. But everyone acts so surprised.

The victim of his own expectations. Expecting to do good in the world, expecting right to always triumph. Expecting to always win even when the proof is in front of him. When he asks a well-meaning favour from someone already ashamed. When he wants the words, but refuses to let himself expect them.

  


* * *

  
_The suffering may include pain, rage, depression, loss of mental or physical capacity, and shame to the point of humiliation and self-imposed isolation._ —Dr. Frank M. Ochberg

  
End.


	2. Criminal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are victims of our own crimes. Leo.

You have grown used to knowing your place in the world. You have adjusted to changing your mind-set every few years. Now you are a soldier, now you are a businessman, now you are the Secretary of Labour, now you are a drunk, now you are the Chief of Staff.

What are you but a criminal, really?

What have you done but commit acts against humanity? Humanity.

Do you have any left, or have you squandered it all paying your rehab bills? Playing poker in the basement.

You had thought to redeem yourself, doing this work. You had thought that all your crimes would be pardoned if you gave the country a good man. He is not a good man. You have committed fraud against your country. You are a criminal.

There are two people in the world who can wipe your soul clean, and one of them is dirty enough as it is. The other has gone silent. The confessional door is closed. No one will listen, no matter how loud you shout or how long you pound at the wood. It does not care.

No one cares, because you are a criminal.

Your poker companions tell you, those long hours in the basement, that you are a victim of a disease. That it's not your fault. You want to melt the chips with the force of the truth and drown them in it.

There are no victims, you would like to think. You would like to tell yourself that everyone gets everything that's coming to them, but the horizon goes dark of a sudden and you have to fly by your instruments alone, and your hands are numb.

There are no criminals, you would like to believe. You want to be taken in by the ramblings of your own party, convinced that it's society's fault and the elite's fault. That it is your fault.

So you are convinced? Because you are a criminal.

Because you have killed, and you have hit, and you have bloodied the faces of those you love. You have bloody hands. Smeared red fingerprints on the glass, on the bottle.

You have become accustomed to knowing yourself, to being able to succinctly describe your inner Leo.

Does one word fit?

Criminal.

Can you adjust to that?

Can you walk in and out of the gazes of those who respect you every day with that word hanging over you?

Criminal. Isn't that all you are?

A bad father, a bad husband. You were a good soldier, though, you never questioned, you went along, you did it with a grin and the shadowed desire for a drink in your eyes.

It is ironic, isn't it, isn't it, that the one thing you were good at--

The irony is obvious, you cannot bring yourself to insult your own intelligence by finishing it.

You consider confession. Just to shovel the words from your mouth into someone's ear, as if that would make it go away. As if that would give you strength. It would give you penance, they would give advice, and you could do it. You could serve your sentence, give your service, owe your duty. You do, you have been working at it through your crimes all these years.

The lives are on you. You never thought about killing before, but now you wish you had run away. You didn't. One more charge on the docket.

And now you can never run again: from all the things you've done; all the things you don't even realise you've done. There's really nothing left to do in this world but hang on.

So you do.

Then you pray no one recognises you for what you really are.

We are victims of our own crimes.

  
End.


	3. Chimes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We have the strength to call ourselves victims. Josh.

Full of random sound and the spiral of wind through evergreen boughs.

So you roll over and don't look out the window, just let God's music percuss in your ears.

This is what you listen to. This does not make your chest clench and your eyes dart. It leaves your fingers slack and your breathing mellow. It does not awaken a burning over your heart, draw your sweaty palm to press into the flames.

You open your eyes and see the light of your cell blink like a metronome. The chimes go on, uncaring. The wind is blind and deaf--it cannot see the movement of the conductor, it cannot hear the angry shouts, the sirens, the ragged breathing from your own lungs.

So you roll over and close your eyes, press your face into the pillow, arms out. Your left hand hangs off the bed. For a moment you recall childhood fears that kept you huddled on the bed--arms and legs inside the car at all times. You imagine a set of stiletto teeth and beady, bugged-out eyes rising from under the bed, called by the sound of the Helen Keller wind. Jaws closing over your hand, almost gone, almost gone almost--

You snatch your arm up and throw it over your head.

The wind is slowly being drowned out by the anti-gravity skid of cars on the wide road outside.

The chimes knell on, absolutely. Ask not for whom the chime chimes, it chimes for thee.

You smile against the pillow, taste cotton pillowcase and feel a hair on your tongue. Good old John Donne.

You wonder who the owner of the chimes is. You wonder if they know you live across the courtyard. You wonder if they would care if they knew you weren't supposed to listen to music.

So you roll over, onto your back again, and almost let your arms drop wide, until you remember the monster under the bed and scoot over. Turning your head, your fingers are curved like old men on the horizon of the bedspread.

Outside the window, copper chimes above your neighbour's balcony ricochet off each other.

It is utterly impossible to imagine if you would have been lying on your bed, thinking the things you are thinking, if the chimes had not chimed for you.

The wind sneaks in the half-open window, blows across your stubbled face. You close your eyes, enjoying the cool impartiality of its caress. The wind is not prejudiced.

You wonder if anyone ever told them you were raised a Jew. If it made them happy, made up for their missing Charlie.

The wind billows into the bedroom, startling you into realisation. The chimes start carolling wildly and do not stop. The sound of the cars becomes a bass line.

The alarm goes off. It is a metronome too, and the punctuation of two piccolos.

You grab the old men and press them to your chest.

But there is no fire.

The wind dies like a whisper against the dawn, pulling reluctantly back over your arms and legs, back over your pounding, dry chest, back over your face, drawing your eyes closed again.

Hand still pressed to your heart, eyes still closed, chimes on a melancholy ritardando, you reach out and slap the alarm, swing your legs over the edge of the bed, feel every bone in your feet move and respond as you stand.

We have the strength to call ourselves victims.

  
End.


	4. Parachutes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We refuse to act like victims. CJ.

You recall fondly the little plastic parachutes your brother used to attach to his army men. He would tie them together with your hair elastics and drop them off the landing at the top of the stairs, watch them float down and land in your father's lap or in the cat's box. He would giggle and turn to look at you with gaping teeth and you would giggle back.

Now you wonder how the army men felt, if they were afraid, if

the words have no place to come out, your mouth is full, and they are calling you again.

You grip the edges of the door, put a foot out into the air, you are not afraid, you open your mouth, ready, ready

as their voices become yours. You have nothing to hide, nothing to jettison, nothing to let the wind tear apart before they find it. But your voice is lost anyway.

You look down, see paper and post-its, see the ground far below, see farmland and scarred wood. Cities overflowing onto statistics and the words

words

words like parachutes billowing above you, you hold the strings, you feel the give and the take and are perfectly, utterly aware of how much you are throwing away.

Their hands obscure your vision, the flashes blind you further, you don't know, you step again, into the air, eyes closed, let go of the door.

air perfectly safe, utterly utterly alone in the air, no one can stop you, you are falling, gravity pulls, there are no rules but gravity and nothing you say will be heard by anyone else, you grip the helmet, you grip the tassel, think about not pulling the chute open

scream everything you were ever afraid to say out loud

words like rain, words like hail, like golf-ball-sized hail, plunging towards you, snowballs, bullets, bullets they want to kill you, to watch you die in a pool of your own blood

falling through the air, thousands of feet between you and the ground, it is exhilarating, it is freedom, and this is what you've been fighting for, you finger the tassel, let the wind snap it away, imagine impact

it's the thought that counts

you have nothing to hide, nothing, the air takes it all away, flings it far, lets farmers and ranch hands find it sticking out of snow drifts

you imagine the body-shaped imprint like Wile E. Coyote in the canyon, but it is snow, white with a blue heart, and you are enclosed by it, it is a comfort

the ground comes closer, the bullets hit you, hit you, you are not wearing Kevlar, you are absolutely full of lead and the tips explode inside you, you hope there are no fail safes

your parachute opens.

You damn the fail safes, look up,

take questions.

We refuse to act like victims.

  
End.


	5. Messenger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We can only expect to be victims. Sam.

Don't kill the messenger, you tell yourself as you walk between offices. Don't kill the messenger. What if the messenger deserves it?

Don't kill the messenger. The first words you thought of when the clocks kept ticking and time stopped. The first thing that popped into your head when you realised he didn't have the guts to tell you himself.

Don't kill the messenger.

So you walk on. You finish your rounds, you go back to your office. You wallow in paper and try to stop yourself from thinking.

If you keep working, you'll be fine.

You wonder why everyone else got the benefit of his explanation, of his voice revealing an essential truth like the voice of God and you got nothing. You got a messenger. You got second-hand information and a brush-off.

You got eighty-seven seconds with a man who doesn't understand you to begin with.

And all your expectations dropped like lead balloons. Like flying men who realise suddenly that they're flying, and flying is impossible, and so they fall.

You push the idea away.

You watch the phosphors turn black on your screen, watch the tiny lines of the shadow mask excising your letters, you press your fingers to the keys, don't pay attention to what you're doing, just working, just putting the message through yourself.

Don't kill the messenger.

You are the messenger.

Fist hitting the desk with a sudden swell of anger, you slam the laptop closed, put your head in your hand, feel the warmth of your skull against your fingers. Something wells in your sinuses, but you push it back. This is no place for tears.

There is no time for tears. Time only to repress, and move on, and keep bringing the message.

You consider the men who used to run between battles and home, between elections and home, between coronations and assassinations and home. You consider that perhaps it would be better to kill the messenger, because then he will not have to run anymore. You consider not feeling the ache and burn in your legs--in your chest. You consider falling to the ground, a knife in your neck, letting the blood pulse and flow steadily from your throat. No more messages.

You know you have been the whipping boy of circumstance. That you have given up a life of lesser moral value but greater emotional stability to cry in your office at midnight.

You don't want lesser moral value.

And you ask yourself what you're doing crying in your office at midnight for a man who has no morals, obviously, who does not believe in you as you believe in him, who does not care that you took the high road and lost your life for him.

He does not care that you are his messenger, and the people are bloodthirsty.

You don't want to cry for him.

You don't want to cry for yourself.

You don't want to cry for this whole fucked administration and the smoke grime on the walls in the Mural Room.

You don't want to write without knowing what you're writing anymore.

You don't want to be a victim.

But you don't have any choice.

We can only expect to be victims.

  
End.


	6. Vitals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We may be victims, but we are not alone. Jed.

Studying the statistics. The bedroom is lit like a late Renaissance painting. Bruegel, Altdorfer. You are alone, one figure, studying the statistics in moody lamplight. It doesn't matter what statistics. How many women under 30 eat chicken on a regular basis (53%, 2-4 times a week). The gender differential in the field of astronomy (too big). The chances of dying on a Thursday.

Seemingly cool, seemingly rational, seemingly one-dimensional. You know.

You know the numbers open out into seas of assumption, badly-worded questions, stock samples. You know the full sparkling depth of the truth of the good numbers.

You know the good numbers by feel. The ink doesn't seem fuzzed on good numbers. The paper doesn't feel rough or like murder, the pollsters and the statisticians meet your eyes with good numbers. You have a head for numbers. You know.

Abbey has said you have a heart for numbers.

You know good numbers the way a priest knows good confessees. The inflection of their voices, the hush of their breath, the beating of their heart on the paper, through the grille, under the weight of their sins and inaccuracies.

Thoth weighing the hearts of the dead against a feather.

Reading the statistics. No minority is alone. There are hundreds of minorities, you imagine them all lining up to get their due, to be raised, to be praised and honoured and to have Jefferson call them created equal. You imagine the dead lining the great empty Hall of Two Truths, their equal hearts on scales.

The numbers are isolated by hard returns on the page. Each person, each number, separate. Church and state. Men and women. Parent and child. Dichotomies of loneliness.

With a sigh, you put your glasses aside. The numbers aren't making any sense. They still want you, and you know they're stupid. You know they're taking the chance that you'll die on a Thursday. Or a Monday. Or any day, really. You could die.

You could be hit by a bus. You wonder if the Secret Service is paid to take buses as well as bullets. MS isn't fatal.

So they're taking the chance with anybody, really. Anybody could die. They could die.

Alone in their minorities of one, shuffling down to have their sins weighed against a feather. You think with a small smile that perhaps that is a myth the Church should have adopted. It works. It certainly scares the shit out of you, the prospect of your heart not being equal to the weight of feather, the idea of your soul being swallowed by the Devourer, part lion, part hippopotamus, part crocodile.

Some patchwork god made of three.

God plus you is a majority of one. You smile a little at that. It is a question you have pondered. It God really that great?

The numbers of Thoth's digital scale spinning blindly upwards or downwards; the hearts of priests and confessees. It is a question you have pondered: are the hearts of the unworthy heavier or lighter than the feather? Do you even believe in God anymore?

You suppose you should, pretending to be alone in a bedroom that isn't really yours, that you didn't ever earn at all. You only gained it through what you people call lies of omission. What everybody calls lies of omission.

You suppose you should. Some people with MS are not doing as well as you are, in any sense of the term. Some people are not the President of the United States. Most people, in fact, are not President of the United States. The overwhelming majority of people are not President of the United States, and yet they think _you_ lead _them_. They think you're in charge when it's the numbers of their lives you're trying to make patterns of in the darkened Hall of Two Truths.

It's all relative, as Leo would say.

Your fingers slide up the page, the numbers fold up and fall away like water. None of your daughters are eating chicken, none of them are astronomers. No chance of dying on a Thursday.

The numbers are good, they make sense, they are proper and true and not at all ambiguous. So you put it away. You turn the lamps off and go to bed, because the bed is not empty and you're tired of pretending to sleep alone.

The numbers surge back like waves and sluice over your hands. Baptismal font. Brass shell of holy water at the door. Holy numbers. You like that.

You like the grand metaphysical conceit of a sea of cleansing numbers. Of others floating along down the Nile, down the Ganges, down the Potomac, clinging to their numbers, and you are not alone.

You like thinking that you can fill your heart with good numbers like an incantation on your tombstone. That you can carry it to Thoth in the bright, crowded, lonely Hall of Two Truths and the weight won't bend your back, break your back.

The numbers drifting gently over your hands, like water, like waves; your hands washed by numbers. You like that.

We may be victims, but chances are we're not alone.

  
End.


	7. Evidence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are not victims if there is no proof. Abbey.

The sky is flat, like a photograph in the wrong light. The sky is blue outside the bedroom window, the clouds are burnt white velvet on blue silk.

It's cold for October, though not for New Hampshire, and your face feels like stone--what it must look like--and your fingers have lost all memory as you read the questions carefully, as you listen to him getting ready in the next room.

The pen is heavy in your hand. It's his pen. The butt of it was shining gold in the exposed breast pocket of his coat, and you just remembered the form. When she gave it to you a month ago, you took one look at the questions and told yourself you forgot about it, but she says that it has to be in next week or she'll fill it out herself, and while such delegation is appealing, you have a feeling it's a sin to let your daughter commit fraud for you--knowingly or not.

With all the political bullshit going on, you didn't know when you'd get another chance to do it away from him, so you pulled it out of your attaché, and the pen slipped out of his pocket and into your fingers so silently, so easily. How does it know you need that balanced weight, like the comfort of his smile?

He clings to you--unconsciously, you know--because he knows he's in too deep this time, he knows he got righteous without right this time. Of course, it's not bad politics for him to have a beautiful, intelligent, dutiful wife, either.

You hear him practicing hellos in the bathroom. In a moment he'll come out with a towel around his shoulders, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and tell you to get moving. You'll give him a look as you slide the folded, completed form back into your case, and tell him you've been ready since eight o'clock, jackass, and it's nine already. He'll think you're mad about not being home for Annie's band concert. It's all right for him to think that.

You leave glaring blanks in the form. The spaces glare whitely at you and you close your eyes as his razor taps against the porcelain sink twice and he asks after some senator's twins.

It's only omission. The blanks are not yes or no. They are implicitly voluntary, and you don't need the evidence following Zoey around for the next four years.

He clears his throat and greets the speaker for the sixth time. You've never left blanks before. You've never needed to. You tell yourself, as you fill in date of birth, social insurance number, tick this, tick that, circle one of three, that it doesn't matter, that these forms are unnecessary bureaucratic bullshit, and bordering on the unconstitutional.

The spaces seem to fill the whole page, you've used very little ink, and the blanks stare at you reproachfully, disbelievingly. You can hardly believe it yourself.

You can't believe you're lying for him without even needing to be asked.

On the other hand, it makes perfect sense.

Why would he have to ask you? You know him so well. Isn't that the kind of wife he needs now? One who will do these things for him without burdening his snowy countenance?

It's a form, and it needs signing. You slowly draw lines to make the date.

This is, despite the cliché, despite the awful irony, the moment of truth.

You rest the heel of your hand on the edge of the occasional table, tracing the last blank with the gold cap of the pen. You tell yourself you're doing this for him, and that he is reason enough.

The shaft is heavy against your middle finger. Remember the writer's callous he used to have? The way it would catch in you hair after a hard day, or bump reassuringly through your knuckles as your two hands wove together?

The weighted glide of the ball over the paper, an eighth of an inch above the line, the ink is such fine ink, it doesn't bleed as you inject your reputation into a lie. Your name is crisp, minted, nearly flat from stress, and you have a brief, horrible, absurd thought.

Should you wipe your prints from the pen?

We are not victims if there is no proof.

  
End.


End file.
